Italy’s Marmolada glacier could disappear by 2040, experts say

The Marmolada glacier has lost 70 hectares of its surface – the equivalent of 98 football fields – in the past five years. Photograph: Giulia Faccin/The Guardian

The Marmolada glacier, the largest and most symbolic of the Dolomites, could melt completely by 2040 owing to rising average temperatures, experts have said.

Italian scientists who are monitoring glaciers and the impact of climate emergency, and who took part in a campaign launched by environmentalist group Legambiente, the international commission for the protection of the Alps (Cipra), with the scientific partnership of the Italian Glacier Committee, said on Monday the Marmolada was losing between 7 and 10cm of depth a day.

Over the past five years 70 hectares (173 acres) of its surface – equalling 98 football fields – have disappeared.

Since the beginning of scientific measurements in 1888, the Marmolada glacier has withdrawn by 1,200 metres in an “irreversible coma”, according to organisers of the campaign, titled Caravan of Glaciers.

The effects of climate emergency are visible all across the Dolomites, which have experienced winter droughts with very little snowfall. According to experts, this, combined with the unusually high temperatures across the region over the summer, is causing glaciers to rapidly melt.

Forni, one of Italy’s largest valley glaciers, has retreated 800 metres within the past 30 years and 1.2 miles (2km) over the past century. In the summer of 1987, the guard of a shelter looking out towards Forni witnessed huge chunks of ice fall from the glacier amid days of heavy storms, eventually producing a rock avalanche that triggered the Val Pola landslide and killed 43 people.

In 2022, the collapse of a glacier on the Marmolada mountain, which sent an avalanche of ice, snow and rocks down the slope, killed 11 people.

Owing to the melting of the glacier, tonnes of waste of all kinds have emerged in the area, including perfectly preserved weapons, sledges, letters, diaries and the bodies of soldiers who fought in the so-called white war, the fighting in the Alps of the Lombardy region of Italy and the Dolomites in Trentino Alto-Adige during the first world war.

“The Alps are a fundamental place at the national and European level, but they are becoming increasingly fragile due to the advancing climate emergency,” Vanda Bonardo, national Alpine coordinator of Legambiente and president of Cipra, said. “The glacier of Marmolada is an important example.”

The general director of Legambiente, Giorgio Zampetti, urged the implementation of mitigation policies, such as “an effective national adaptation plan to the climate crisis, starting from the most vulnerable areas, such as high mountains”.